“An Editor Advised Me to Stop Writing Mother Bird Poems” by Jennifer Givhan

January 17, 2013Posted by

Jennifer Givhan

AN EDITOR ADVISED ME TO STOP WRITING MOTHER BIRD POEMS

The kitchen of my past smells of carne adovada
and green chiles blackened on the comal.
These days, I don’t even like to boil eggs for fear
I’ll overcook them—the whites will ooze
through cracked shells streaming into grungy
water I’ve forgotten to salt. My family could
eat peanut butter sandwiches for dinner
every night without complaint.

I sit down to write and wonder what’s the point?
No matter how many beautiful stories
I create, some man whose uncle raped his mother
will snatch a young boy from the sidewalk
while he walks home, his mama waiting
two blocks away for his cowboy hat
to turn the corner. But the hat
never comes, and the boy

she nursed and sang to—Twinkle Star
over and over, pouring bathwater to soothe
his fear of No More Tears suds
because even those burn—that boy
who learned to read by memorizing
all the books at bedtime but never
would eat anything green not
smothered in barbecue sauce. Gone.

They’ll find his body, sure.
The mother will mourn. Many of us will vow
never to let our children walk alone.
I will walk with my children
until they’re eighty. But then my boy will run
ahead in the mall, and I’ll lose him
for a split second. A split second.
It won’t matter how many poems

I’ve written or dinners I’ve cooked or baths
I’ve given. Except that it will.
As the peanut butter matters. The salt in the water.
The boy on the street, his too-large cowboy boots
forever walking home toward his mama.
His mama, forever on the porch,
searching the skyline for a hat.

—from Rattle #37, Summer 2012

__________

Jennifer Givhan: “As a Latina writer from a small desert community on the California/Mexico border, a major goal for my writing is to speak the multivalent voices of the women I grew up with—the mothers, daughters, childless women, aunties, and nanas who have become the voices\ of my poetry. The first collection I wrote shaped itself around my experience with infertility, pregnancy loss, depression, and, finally, emergence into motherhood through the adoption of my now four-year-old son and the birth of my now one-year-old daughter. Thus, my greatest writing achievement is also my greatest life achievement— the realization of myself as a creator. It speaks to the vital and life-supporting nature of poetry and reminds me daily why the creation of poetry is so important.” (web)

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